It's really simple: When you pirate something, you make a copy. That copy belongs to the rightsholder: this is what copyright is. By not immediately rendering that copy up to its rightful owner, you have stolen it.

Piracy is theft. Pirates are thieves. QED.

What about stores that are pure user based such as online ones like Ebay or classified ones like craigslist(I never heard about people buying individual games of craigslist but still)? I would think they make up a huge amount of used game sales. You aren't really buying it from a store that would note these things and order more new copies would you? Maybe I'm missing something in how these online auction stores work.

Piracy is a rights issue. Copying or using things that you have no right to, is illegal and people should be punished accordingly.

All I'm going to say is.. Piracy is bad mmm'kay.

Piracy is theft of service. It is theft.

Fixed!

You've got my thumbs up.

I really wish people would talk more about the impact on the game industry, than about the semantic definitions of what's theft and what's not.

But by all means, continue your pointless arguments :P

Actually its kind of like the 'common resource or tragedy of the commons problem'

See individually it doesn't hurt if one person pirates a game, you can look at it and say "hey im not causing any harm, its just little old me sick of high prices, whatever" however you have to consider the effect of what millions of individuals do, so whilst they do little harm individually its the behaviour of millions of people working the same way which causes the damage. Thats why things like quotas exist, and thats why the penalties are so harsh for exceeding quotas in fishing for example even though the individual damage is minimal they have to create a big enough disincentive so a whole population of fishermen stick to the rules to preserve the fishing resource for everyone. Now replace fishermen with gamers and fish with game developers, and think about what happens if the fishermen pillage the fish resource.

Well the sig is correct, video game pircacy is not theft.
But it is the illegal counterfeiting of copyrighted property.

My opinion is that piracy is wrong and is rightly illegal. However I do believe copyright laws are deeply flawed in this day and age.