They probably compare the amount of sharers of pirated copies to their own sales rates, however, my own concern from my understanding of this sort of thing is that there is a downloader and an uploader, but the downloader can also sometimes be uploading, so they would count as one of each, therefore you could theoretically get up to double the true number of people sharing the program.

That said, 1%, strictly speaking, is 1% too many, particuarly in cases such as this, where the company involved isn't even using something like DRM, as has been said before, the West needs to shake this 'Everything, Right Now' attitude.

He's right about the solution to some degree, particuarly in the current financial climate, expensive games are going to be copied more than cheap ones, but people do need to start showing some respect to companies that don't behave like 'All your installs are belong to us.'.

The game probably has some sort of online component to it, which makes every copy connect to their servers. They know how many copies they sold, and they can track how many copies are connecting to the servers.

-- http://pixelantes.blogspot.com/

I was just about to say the same thing :)

Absolutely spot on

Really? To me it makes more sense than FIFA having 90% piracy. It's niche. Niche titles tend to have a small core group of followers who'll support it, and if anyone else cares they don't care enough to pay anywhere near full price just to dabble.