"Let them just play pirated games" wins. barely xD I think most people buy the games in sales/bundles anyway, sooner or later.

Now with the Steam refunds there's no legit reason to do it at all (to try it, test it on your machine, etc)

Untill the end of the last year , i haven't spend a Single dollar on video games .
Reasoning being , i could not afford it :)

I wont say that pirating games is right ... but i will defend anyone who pirate them cause he have no other means of obtaining them .

Personal Responsibility. It is theft. I would not charge $200 or $5000 or outrageous fines for theft, merely the cost of the game, give outrageous fines for the person who was the first seeder. Gaming is ridiculously priced these days, like 80's 90's prices, and unless companies make gaming cheaper by 50% they will lose sales on all but the most largest flagship IPs. If they cared about theft they would go SSD console only, which they should.

Perhaps people should cut back on purchasing so much and prioritizing certain things they want. You spend $200-$400 a year for maybe 5-10 titles, you shouldn't be pirating the other 5-10 because your crying about money or because the devs didn't make a demo. Bad excuses are the same as theft and theft is a big business from the little guy to the big guy dumping thousands of roms and discs every day in china. Even if it hardly hurts the bottom line doesn't make it anything less then theft.

this doesn't make sense
some people don't have money to pay for games
some people have some money and they wont ever pay for games

I don't support piracy as a way to get something for free, but I have pirated software in the past if it doesn't provide a demo. I'm not throwing my limited amount of money away for something I may be unable to use.

I like watching all these people who try to defend pirating saying it's not stealing when in fact it is. It doesn't matter how you spin it, it's always stealing.

I'm buying even games I have pirated in the past (when i was a poor student and couldn't afford to purchase it) and I'm also encouraging my friends about the benefits of a purchased game if they tell me about a pirated game, which works sometimes :D

I've pirated games for almost a decade before creating a Steam account and stoping my days of cracking exe files.
It has been almost 2 years since the last time I pirated a PC game, I'm also mostly clean in android with just 1 pirated game in the last 6 months.
I'm currently trying to avoid pirating software, movies and music.

But even tho I'm trying to get clean. I'm still firm in my position: There is nothing intrinsically wrong in piracy. As an action, it is completelly neutral from a moral perspective.

First world problems.
When I was a kid, typical game cost about 1/5 of my mothers salary. She basically was only one getting money, except for grandparents with laughably low pension, but hey - they had to eat something too. Sooo, I guess I needed to shut it and never play game until I got some spare money (which happened about 8 years later)? Hm?
Well, let me tell you a funny story about kiddo who liked computer games, learned lots and lots of things about computers doing that and now works in international organization as software developer and ensures that nice citizens of USA can spend their dollars well with big, scary chip cards incoming.

What I was trying to say with my rant - do not judge people before you have walked at least a day in their shoes. Believe me, most of moral knights here haven't seen a tiny bit of shithole I have lived in while I was a kid and still that was within living standard of so called "golden billion". Yes, now it is quite easy to game on spare change due to bundles and F2P games, but I would not judge anyone who pirates just by one glance - you can never know how unavailable fun could be for them.
Yes, I had the bad luck growing up in times when Gabe was not even thinking about Steam. ( Starcraft and GTA ( the original ones ) ruled the block those days )

For those who cry "Robbery on high seas!" - if one is determined not to pay for the game, he will not pay for it. Not buying or pirating - no difference. And yes - availability and price is a big deal. I went 100% legit just because I decided that I will support developers and save myself some time and nerves just by buying the games, because it is so easy and cheap. Now I can afford it - few years earlier even game on sale for 5$ would cut short my budget and I would have to eat less that week...

Haven't pirated a game in a while but I won't restrain myself should I want to play a game I can't buy. Now but here's my 2 cents:

I live in an eastern Europe country with an entry-level wage of 200 euros per month. Being a middle-class citizen, after years of hard work, my wage is now around 350 euros. Now look at me, look at the prices for a new game on Steam and tell me I shouldn't pirate games. No. We don't waste a good portion of our monthly pay for a game that might suck big time. For western Europe or USA, things might be different. You work one day and you can buy a full-priced game (maybe even two, depending on the wage) and even have money left for a coke and a burger. I work 3 days for the same game with the condition I don't even EAT. 2 years ago I worked 5 days for the same game.
The only two games I bought at full price were Dark Souls II and Elite: Dangerous. And that's because I skipped a meal every day for a month. I badly wanted to buy them and enjoy the online.
Unless there's some cosmic alignment and pricing would be decent for every region, I will continue to pirate games when I can't afford them.

We aren't all cheap bastards. Some of us are poor bastards.

If its a new release and getting mixed feedback but I'm a little interested, I'll pirate it. But, if I like it, and play longer than an hour, I always buy it.

I don't have much money, since I discovered Steam Bundles (Humble, Indie Gala, Bundle Stars, etc.) I haven't pirated any game, I did however pirate a few games in the past (in my teens I pirated about 5-10 games and just 1 indie game after I finished high school).

So I do not support piracy, but I understand SOME of the people who pirate them, there are tons of people who, like me, pirated in their youth and after making some money they start paying everything.

I also find piracy to be a way to protest, as an example I think that publishers who sell too many DLCs, stripping down main story content and even not making sales or "complete editions" of the game years after released have it coming when some people prefer to buy the base game and then pirate it with all of the DLCs. Yes, I am talking mainly about EA games, lol.

Last game I pirated was Dragon Ball Xenoverse. Played about 10 hours and liked what I saw so I purchased the game.
Piracy is fine as it is, many people use it to test the games before buying, and it's good that they do so since many games these days don't represent the quality that (p)reviews and other media coverages suggest. EG: Alien Colonial Marines, just to name the most infamous one.
And for those who wouldn't buy the product anyway, you can't really do anything about them.

If you want to blame someone then blame the publishers who do practises that alinates their fanbase (pre-order exclusive, ridiculous amount of DLC, cut content etc etc.)

View attached image.

I stopped pirating games years ago because I decided a few things:

1. If I like a product why not buy it? Show the devs some love so they can continue releasing enjoyable titles.
2. The pirate scene isn't the safest scene with all the crap that accompanies cracks. Besides, updates aren't cracked as fast as devs releasing patches for the games.
3. Steam is a better digital content manager than I ever was with my cds and dvds.

before anyone says that it's like borrowing a library book, think of this. When you borrow a library book, you are using the only copy, and no one else can at the same time. When it comes to pirating, the owner gets to use it at the same time, and so does everyone else who pirates it. So basically, pirating is like 1000 people using one copy at the same time, while borrowing a book is someone using A COPY at different times. So they are not the same.

I won't defend it, but your example of the cinema isn't very good. For example here on some cinemas they allow to quit the film before a quarter and they allow to see another film or get a coupon to come back other day (free tickets).

The only torrent game i have on my pc is halo 2. Because thats the only way to get it on XP.

I work for 2 USD a week. No game publisher cares to sell their games here so they are re-sold with a huge overprice. Steam doesnt even allow us to buy games with our currency

So I pirate, I can not afford a 60 USD game sold at the price of 200 USD. Sorry, but food is more important than games.

I know that its not right but I try to stay legit as possible. It has taken years for me to get an AAA game because I have to get cards to trade it, wait for a huge price drop, etc.

Just as a little example, it took me 2 years to become premium in TF2.

YARRHHHHH

Is it normal to lend discs to friends? Is it normal to rent from and lend books to public/private libraries? Is it normal to enjoy public domain media, and then use that media for your own artistic endeavors?

Should it be normal for corporate fat cat cunts and their political stooges to hold the proliferation of media and ideas at ransom? Does culture belong to copyright holders, or to culture itself? Don't be mistaken, IP law was never meant to protect the supposed rights of authors or readers.

Consider a situation where I give you a book. Is there a moral divide between giving a physical book, and giving a digital copy? Have I offended the author? What if I manually recreated a physical copy of the book on my own typewriter? Does this become wrong if I manage to automate the process? Do the moral values of any of these situations depend on which side of an arbitrary time limit they take place in?

I was in the process of writing a mini-essay defending file sharing as a practice, and highlighting why the anti-file sharing mentality was logically inconsistent and morally destructive. Alas I lost it because I mistakenly didn't have a type-form backup addon installed. I might recreate it from memory if I feel like it. Meanwhile, here's the world's smallest violin, playing for all the artists driven to starvation by VHS, Napster, and The Pirate Bay.