Would you pirate if it was legal?

That's kinda of an easy question. No. If everyone pirated games, they wouldn't make them.Companies go where money is. I wouldn't kill my favorite pastime(many other people's as well) on purpose.

Money should be illegaled (do we need another two L's there?)

well if piracy would be legal im a sure that no one would produce games, plus i like reward the ones that have hard work develop games. making a game its more hard as you think...
PS: i hate drm, but i blame more the pirates than publishers...

Oh hell yeah...I would call my ship the "Frightanic" and i would get me a parrot and a wooden leg. People should call me Nemo NoBeard

To people who say: "in my country piracy is legal", are you sure? I know music and movie piracy (downloading) is quite often legal, only sharing is illegal (both upload to pages OR allowing to download from you when you torrent it for yourself). But quite often software have different law. AND there's EULAs, and most software have "one person can use one copy at same time"...

it's an oxymoron

I pirate 99% of games I own, I only buy games worth the multiplayer.

If piracy would be legal, there won't be games to pirate.

YYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Hell yeah, open seas, drinking, the brotherhood, the chests full of gold! I am down right now! All we need is a boat and a flag....

Or Archeage in North America, like naow!!

I don't care about laws, it's only about ethics. I probably buy games at a price that I think it's okay to me after playing them.

If i want to play a game, then i am probably buy it. since i dont play so mutch game, its ok... even if the game is over priced like diablo3. on the other hand, somethimes if I am only interested in a games graphics, than i am just get it from torrent, and still if i find the game enjoyable (happened with Far Cry for example), than I buy it, couse in most cases, the support makes the game even better trou patches and fixes.

"Would you pirate if it was legal?"

Sorry, since there are no laws about looting and pillaging ships for their gold and goods where I live, I'm not sure I understand your question.

depending on DRM actually cracked versions work better (less or no crashes, more OS compatibility)
having said that, I never buy a DRM'ed game, I dont get a pirated version either!

Nah I would still feel bad...

Like once I wanted to pirate a certain indie game that's on sale right now for $3.39 and the devs posted a comment saying "wow we're sad that you don't want to buy the game but that's cool I guess" and I felt bad so I didn't!

If pirate was legal games and other stuff would be just Freeware with donate option.

it won't be legal ever. anyways o think there will be many who support developers via donations.

just wanted to add this to discussion...
since (2007) I installed Steam and registered at GOG I've never ever leeched a single game again !

I pirate no matter what. I don't play for bad games. If the games are good I'll buy them anyways.

Piracy isn't allowed to be talked about on Steamgifts we've tried this before but free thinking isn't allowed :]

Lol, I mostly stopped pirating after steam. Although, I play less games if I don't pirate them, as they are taking up space on my computer and I can't delete them until I finish. I see steam as a way to keep all of these games within easy reach, without the hassle of taking up space on my HD.

In some countries it's not illegal, so technically your question is already answered. In Bulgaria it is not illegal(and is therefore "legal") so everyone(including myself) pirate. There is even a perfectly functional and open to the public (well, if you have Bulgarian IP at least) torrent site. :P
It totally has NOTHING to do with half the games being ass-expensive for the average salary(50 euro which is about... 1/4 of the salary for a game? But then where are people gonna get money for food, electricity and other unimportant stuff, eh?) or a good deal of games being region restricted(coughGames for Windows Livecough).

Personally, I haven't pirated anything since getting on Steam. With a HUGE backlog it doesn't look to me like I'll be short on games for the next few years. So even though Alice (as well as the portion of my brain reminding me that I hate EA) has been calling for me in my sleep to pirate her, I haven't gotten myself to actually doing it.

So, as a conclusion- would anyone going "But it's illegal! Pirate! Shun him." kindly SHUT.THE.FUCK.UP!

It's not pirating if it's legal...?

Stupid thread, to be honest.

I've read the answers and feel almost everyone is under educated on this topic. Jaywalking is illegal, changing lanes without due signal while driving an automobile is also, but neither are strongly enforced in most countries. Depending on where you live your government may feel the same about piracy. So in these places where 'pirating' is no more illegal than crossing a street without a walk signal, or changing lanes without flicking your signal, do you see any reason to not pirate? Most people break a ton of laws daily, even stupid things like talking on their cellphone or smoking a cigarette in the wrong place at the wrong time. The issue is not the legality of the situation.

It becomes a moral dilemma between supporting an artist or publisher with money you may or may not have and not "stealing" a product you might never have, which may hold zero value to the parties that might receive anything for your purchase to begin with. In the case of piracy where the pirate has more than adequate means to support the creator but chooses not, the same argument can be made in saying the funds were allocated elsewhere to begin with. The one case where the pirate may have purchased the product, but chose not to simply because they could get it for free, and then instead sat on stockpiles of money, I imagine is incredibly rare.

Not to say that there aren't heavy financial losses associated with SOME titles due to piracy. I feel it is merely heavily overstated.

The real problem is how indirect and obligatory the payment for nothing has become in a capitalist society. Such arbitrary numbers attached to the value of intellectual property [which of course has value, but how do you price a game?] So many middle men. Some people simply can't pay for some things, and perhaps they should be denied access to those things. This works and has been in effect globally for centuries for entrance to an event or physical goods distributed. But when it is something as simple as copying data, [anyone remember how VHS tapes were going to ruin the world of screen production as you recorded their TV and movies?] it can't be stopped.

That's the power of sharing.

pirating is another word for testing