The significance of the counter-rotating terms in the polyatomic Jaynes-Cummings model with cavity losses is demonstrated. Numerical results for the time evolution of the atomic population inversion and dipole moment for an initial Fock-state field with different photon numbers are presented for various cavity dampings. The appearance of new steady states for the population inversion and the mean-photon number under the influence of the counter-rotating terms is pointed out. Namely, as is shown, the presence of “virtual photons”, produced by the counter-rotating terms, leads to these effects.