There are plenty of people who will download because its available before their copy will hit them through the post and feel its perfectly ok to do so and frankly I agree. There will also be a decent number of people who download it so they can demo it, loved it and bought it. There will also be tonnes of people who downloaded it to demo it, would have bought it if they loved it but mostly uninstalled and never finished the space age part because it was so pathetically boring and not remotely fun.
1.7million, in a planet with 6 billion people and probably a good few hundred million computers that were capable of playing it, not exactly crazy high numbers if you ask me. The simple fact is, if it wasn't a gimmick game and wasn't so utterly utterly crap, also a completely rip of of 5 other games just done short and very very badly, more people would have bought it, including those that downloaded it.
Basically the stat means nothing without a clue who owned a copy that hadn't recieved it, bought it afterwards, never bothered playing it and those that played it but had it not been available for download STILL wouldn't have bought it.
lets take my friend, MasterDrunken, he downloaded Overload as was bored and had heard nothing at all about the game but sounded a little quirky when I clicked the link on newsbin to see what the game was. After playing it, he bought it, and bought the sequal and enjoyed both a lot. Firstly I, i mean HE would never have spent money on a game like that without playing it first, I simply would never have played it, never bought the game or the sequal version. Also without newsbin, I would never have even heard of the game. Opp's, another situation where downloading led to increased sales
Its very simple, make a great game and you'll rake in millions, make an incredibly gimmicky game with no actually good gameplay and you won't sell well. Has nothing to do with piracy in any way at all.
Crysis made a profit, hell Spore probably made a huge profit, they would have made more if the game was better, and less if they were worse.
